My boyfriend drives a 2000 Ford Taurus station wagon with 112,000 miles. He’s a doctor who specializes in palliative care medicine, which is to say he helps patients, families and other doctors navigate the scary time around the end of life.

Paul’s station wagon is worth less than $2,000, and it has a slipping, shimmying grinding between first and second gears. For the most part, we dance around it by letting off the accelerator at about the time the car shifts. We feel like we have an acceptable diagnosis: The transmission is broken and would cost more than the value of the car to fix. What we want is a prognosis. More important, what are the car’s final moments going to look like? Will she go fast, lurching to a stop? Or will she begin to show some sign that the end is near so that we have time to get to safety?

Code Blue

RAY: This is a classic case of the cobbler’s family wearing shoes with holes in them. Paul is able to provide a wonderful, necessary service to others, but he can’t do it for himself. This car needs palliative care!

TOM: Actually, it needs euthanasia, but tell him you’ll settle for a little forethought and a “do not resuscitate” order.

RAY: The whole purpose of palliative care is to help people face an unfortunate reality in a kind and caring way.

TOM: That’s what your boyfriend needs with his dying heap of a Taurus. The first thing a dying patient and his family have to do is face the reality that the end is near. Your boyfriend is doing just the opposite: He’s whistling past the junkyard.

RAY: Once the sad reality is accepted, you can decide how to handle the coming transition, for everyone involved. You have time to make plans — like, in this case, shopping for an adequate replacement car before you’re stranded five hours away from home on a 95-degree day.

TOM: And the prognosis is lousy. This car is like a guy who’s had eight heart attacks and is still eating three cheese steaks a day: It could expire at any moment. And when it goes, it’ll be without warning, and most likely the engine will just rev up but the car won’t move. That may not sound terribly dangerous — unless you happen to be making a left turn across traffic or crossing a railroad track.

RAY: So sit him down, put your hands on his shoulders, look straight into his eyes and say, “Hon, we have to discuss a very difficult subject.”

TOM: And if that doesn’t work, you buy a car, and charge him the IRS-approved 55.5 cents a mile to ride with you.